11 April 2010

Quilts of our Lives, Part 5 (or so)

Long-time readers have seen bits of this quilt before. I made it to replace the first quilt I made Shaun (which I haven't yet photographed) because that one plum wore out. This one is a bit less beloved, for some reason, perhaps because it's simpler, or perhaps because the original is always better.

I made 4 giant log-cabin blocks, using fabrics to represent things important to Shaun or to our lives together. I know that the color and pattern combination is a bit less than...perfect, but that's intentional, too. The fabric includes baseball, football, music, gambling, bumble bees, and ladybugs. Two of those were V's Halloween costumes of years past...you figure out which is which. It's machine stitched, and since the blocks are so large (each strip is 6" wide) I had to go beyond stitching in the ditch, so after stitching straight lines, I zigged and zagged in a kind of abstract sunburst pattern. You can kind of see it here.

I pieced the back, which is not something I've usually done, but all the cool quilters are doing it, and I find I like it quite a bit. Plus, when I went to put the quilt together, it was much larger than I'd expected (I think about 6 feet x 8 1/2 feet), and I didn't have enough backing, so it was a necessity. My first dozen or better quilts were not labeled; I learned a long time ago about the importance of labels to quilt historians, but 1. I don't know that my quilts will hold much historical significance, since most of them get used until they fall apart, and 2. I was lazy. But I'm trying to do better, and for Shaun's second quilt, I embroidered a label, using an extra block from our wedding quilt (lord, that's a whole nother post on its own. Far, far in the future). It says: "You are my Sunshine/For Shaun/ love Jen/9 November 2008".

I like making quilts for people I love, especially if I can sneak under a corner now and then, too.

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